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The current invention relates to a system for toy or real construction elements, as well as molecular and crystal modeling tools, which may be implemented in either a physical or virtual reality. The goals of the current invention are: 1) to provide educational, entertaining, and constructional value while providing a means of visualizing and exploring the principles and realms of space filling, space sharing, three dimensional tiling, and three dimensional fractals; and 2) to provide a logic puzzle and an entertaining metaphor for many of life""s challenges.
Prior to the current invention, most construction elements of any similar nature could be placed into one or more of four categories:
1) Stacking Blocksxe2x80x94which provide no means for self-retention of assembled structures, other than gravity; but require some form of bonding material if they are to be secured in their relative positions;
2) Member Suspended Interconnected Elementsxe2x80x94which require rods or other secondary connective devices to determine and/or secure their relative positions in space; and
3) Slotted circular or polygonal discsxe2x80x94while interfitting or intercleaving, their teachings do not lend themselves to producing nonplanar elements required to emulate real world, molecular building blocks. Assemblies produced with such planar elements are not substantially space filled.
4) Interfitting Surface Indentationsxe2x80x94where complimentary patterns of protrusions and indentations provide for the alignment and mating of the surfaces of their generally polyhedral forms in a manner/direction which is orthogonal with respect to those mating surfaces.
No prior art has attempted to produce self-interfitting, self-retaining construction elements which produce substantially space-filled structures/assemblies. Most construction elements of prior design attempt to make their use more obvious and easy; while a significant portion of the current inventions value as an entertainment device and educational tool is the mystery, puzzlement, and challenges it presents due to the tendency of its various embodiments to retain the natural restraints associated with real-world elemental building blocks. Some examples of possible applications for the elements of the invention are as follows:
1) the restricted intercleaving nature of the elements may be used to demonstrate the intercleaving nature of covalent chemical bonds;
2) some of the required assembly and disassembly methods for the elements are analogous to thermal contraction and expansion in solids;
3) other assembly and disassembly methods emulate crystal growing and cleaving;
4) the natural inclination for the elements to produce mirror image (enatiomorphic) structures may be used to demonstrate both right-hand rotating (dextrorotary) formations and left-hand rotating (levorotary) formations, such as during growth of organic substances and crystals;
5) the self-similar nature of assembled supersets of the elements of the invention may be used to emulate the development of polymer compounds from smaller polymer and monomer building blocks;
6) the self-similar nature of the assembled elements may also be used in creating complex embodiments and assemblies enabling a new means of representing the fractal nature of the physical world; and
7) the ability of select embodiments of the invention to more naturally implement assemblies with fivefold symmetry may assist in demonstrating and explaining recently discovered chemical compounds with similar, but unexpected, symmetries.
Accordingly, the building blocks of the invention are capable of not only modeling the net result of molecular and crystal formations, but also of simulating the nature of the difficulties and processes involved in forming such chemical assemblages. Part of the challenge associated with the use of the current invention is that once one has determined which elements are needed and where they must go in order to create a given assembly, the user must still figure out how to get them there; once again simulating the very nature of creating assemblies of chemical elements.
In summary, although many prior teachings demonstrate the combining of polyhedral elements into larger assemblies, none of these construction elements mate non-orthogonally with respect to the engaging surfaces without some form of adhesive or secondary connection device or mechanism to implement the connection or to retain their interconnected alignments. Although most of the manufactures defined by the invention do not result in fully space-filled assemblies, all assemblies resulting from the use of the present invention are substantially more space-filling than any of the planar intercleaving manufactures of any prior art. Finally, no prior art provides the ability to produce the uniquely elegant assemblies enabled by the present invention.
The invention is a system and set of intercleaving (interfitting and adhering) elements which may be used as structural elements, building blocks, construction components, modeling elements, or the like. Each of these discrete structural elements is comprised of a plurality of pyramids, or other polyhedral members, clustered around at least one central point in such a manner that the resulting cluster or clusters form a discrete structural element. The polyhedral members may be joined at least partially along coincident edges for maintaining the structural stability of the element. A portion of the joining coincident edges of the polyhedral members are slotted or not completely joined (xe2x80x9cdifurcatedxe2x80x9d) on the outer half of the joining edge to facilitate interfitting of a first element with a second element.
Accordingly, each element of the invention has the ability to be interfitted with other complimentary elements in a mutually interfitting and adhering manner (i.e., xe2x80x9cintercleavingxe2x80x9d) along the coincident edges of sets of diagonally adjacent polyhedral members (such as pyramids) which have been difurcated along an outermost portion of their coincident edges which radiate from their coincident central point. The primary mechanism for the mutual cleaving or adherence of the interfitted elements is friction, enhanced by wedging forces, due, in part, to the relatively narrow nature of these provided clefts, slots, or slits (collectively or interchangeably referred to as xe2x80x9cdifurcationsxe2x80x9d) formed in the coincident edges of the polyhedral members which make up each element. However, the effectiveness of their intercleaving properties may be enhanced by the addition of a variety of standard techniques for increasing their resistance to disassembly, including locking mechanisms or other protrusions or undulations.
Consequently, the present invention provides a unique structural element, building block, modeling element, construction component, puzzle, or the like. The elements of the invention may be intermitted into a variety of configurations and arrangements. Thus, the present invention effectively combines a plurality of polyhedral members into discrete elements, and enables those elements to interfit with and adhere to complementary elements also formed of a plurality of polyhedral members. Accordingly, it will be apparent that the present invention provides a novel, aesthetic, and unconventional structural element.